Return to Home
by Nagia
Summary: Sequel to Hello to the Night. The Titans temporarily disband, but there are a few problems left to solve, and two of the Titans are bent on solving them. And, because this is Raven's life, complications ensue.
1. Chapter One

**Return to Home**

**Chapter One**

**Prelude**

Dick Grayson calmly helped Alfred carry the bags into the manor. When they succeeded in this task, some fifteen minutes later, he discovered Starfire staring at the foyer, her eyes wide as saucers. It made her look cute, and beautiful, and lots of other things he didn't want to describe. It made him wonder how Raven would have reacted.

"If you think _this_ is wicked cool," Dick told her, "the rest of this museum is way, _way_ cooler."

**1**

_Three days later_

Starfire had to agree with Dick— Wayne Manor was one of the most amazing places she'd ever visited.

A pity she'd have to leave it in a month, to switch places with Raven. But at least she'd have Cyborg to keep her company. Poor Raven. Raven had no one.

"Miss Anders," said the old man (Robin [now 'Dick'] and Bruce called him 'Alfred,' and said something about his being a 'butler,' whatever that was). "Hallways are for walking from room to room, not for floating."

She sighed and returned to the ground. She had never had to walk so far within a home before! On Tamaran, everyone could fly, so everyone did. But here on Earth, where most people could not fly, it seemed that etiquette (as Dick said Alfred was an expert on) demanded that she walked.

_Nightfall_

They sat in the dining room at a vast, rectangular table. Bruce sat at one end of it ('the head of the table,' she believed), Dick sat to Bruce's right, and she sat across from Dick.

Eating dinner at such a large table felt odd. Her time on Earth had acquainted her with the more informal style of eating seen in Titan Tower: everybody round one large— and yet far too small— table, talking, laughing and joking.

Here, dinner passed in near silence. Every now and then, Bruce or Dick would share some tidbit about his day, and the other would comment on it. Conversation, unlike what they'd had in Titan Tower, remained serious and formal.

"You're rather quiet tonight, Kory," Bruce told her solemnly, those glacier blue eyes trained on her. "Is something wrong?"

She shook her head. "No, nothing is wrong. I am quite well... It is just that I have been comparing dinner here to dinner at Titan Tower." She gave a nervous laugh. "I must admit, you eat dinner here in a very different way from the way we eat dinner at Titan Tower."

"How so?" Bruce asked.

"Here, dinner is more quiet and serious. It is also formal. At Titan Tower, we talk loudly and ceaselessly, and laugh a lot, and sit around a table that is too small for five people. Here, we talk quietly and rarely, laugh seldom, and sit around a table that is far too big."

Bruce gave a low chuckle, but said nothing further.

It bothered her. If Bruce felt joy (something she had seen only once, and that had been when he and Robin— Dick, she corrected herself— had rushed into each others arms), then why did he not share his reasons for feeling it? And why did his laughter sound so sad? Even Raven did not seem as silent and sad as Bruce did.

A moment later, Bruce spoke again. "How did you eat dinner on Tamaran? Was it more like dinner here or dinner at the Tower?"

She paused to think for a moment. "Well, it was like dinner here in that we had a large table and many, many large dishes. But the conversation had more joy and noise and laughter."

"There is something you need to see, Kory."

She noticed that Dick looked to him for a moment, and something seemed to happen. She couldn't define it, but she somehow knew that in that moment, they had sent some sort of message.

"Star, a word of warning. What we're going to show you... you must not confuse with the life in the Manor." Dick paused. "When we show you what we show you, I'm Robin, and he's Batman. But when we return to the Manor, I'm Dick and he's Bruce. Our lives depend on you not confusing the two."

She wasn't sure she understood, but she nodded anyways.

Dinner concluded, and Bruce and Dick led her to an old grandfather clock. Bruce did something to it, and a secret passageway opened.

She followed them down, and soon found herself in an enormous cavern. Bats hung from the ceiling, though she heard a few squeaks.

Staring wide-eyed, she realized that she stood at the top of a cliff or balcony, and that steps led down. She nearly flew down the steps, trying to see just what she had entered.

"What is this place?" Starfire asked.

"The Batcave," Bruce told her. "This is where Batman bases his operations."

"Amazing!" She spied a large, long vehicle and went up to stare. "This is a beautiful vehicle," she breathed.

"That's the Batmobile," Robin said. "When I turned sixteen, Batman let me drive it."

"And this?" She pointed at a red and black motorcycle. It looked almost exactly like Robin's motorcycle in Jump City.

"The original R-Cycle. The one in Jump City is the secondary R-Cycle. It seemed more effective to build a second R-Cycle and leave it in Jump City than to haul it around the country."

"We're going out on patrol tonight," Batman told them. "Robin, if you would please show Starfire the protocols?"

"Of course," Robin said. "Come on, I'll show you around. Right now, we're standing in the motor pool. It's essentially our parking lot, where we keep the vehicles and do maintenance on them. It's the main exit from the Batcave— and only exit that I know of — to the city of Gotham."

He showed her to a huge computer. "This is the Cray. I'm pretty sure Batman would rather you left it alone, so I won't go into too many details."

She followed him over to a door she hadn't noticed located beneath the entrance cliff.

"This is the costume vault. It's where we keep our costumes. Don't touch anybody's costume but your own. They're kind of personal."

She nodded, and allowed Robin to lead her through the back of the costume vault into a large, tiled area. "This is the shower. One large room, two different shower sections. Men," he pointed, "over there, and women," he pointed again, "over there."

They went back through the vault and found themselves staring at another door she hadn't noticed. "This is the armory. It's where we keep our supplies. Every night when we return from patrol, we refill the vehicles' gas tanks, perform any needed maintenance on them, and then restock our utility belts with whatever supplies we used from here. After that, we shower and put our costumes up."

They left the armory and he led her to a nigh-invisible door just to its right. The three doors cut into a hallway in the cliff formed a shaft, and the third door was straight down it.

Robin did not enter it, nor did he make any move to do so. "This is the weapons vault. It contains highly dangerous weapons, so you won't be going in there."

"What would happen if I were to try?"

Robin laughed humorlessly. "You don't want to know. It wouldn't be fatal, but it would certainly be painful."

"Is all of this... security... necessary?" She gestured around the Batcave.

"Yes," Robin told her. "Gotham is a dangerous place. The criminals fear and respect Batman's name... but they also despise it. We have many enemies in this city, and almost all of them would do anything to kill one or both of us."

"But why, Robin? You are a genuinely nice person, and Batman does not seem terrible..."

He chuckled again. This time, it held a little mirth. "Starfire, I might seem _nice_ to you... But, well, imagine you're a mook for a second. Here you are, in the middle of a mugging, you're just about to get away with it, and suddenly, this smart-assed kid in a bright red and green costume shows up, kicks your butt, and sends you to jail. Does that seem very nice to you? You were just about to get some money you need very badly, and some kid ties you up and calls the cops, so you go to jail."

"I suppose it would not seem very nice," she allowed.

"That's right. Now, what would you like to do that kid? He sent you to a bad place, where lots of nasty people live. When you get out of jail, what would you like to do to him?"

"I... But I-as-the-mook did something wrong!"

"That's right. Mugging is wrong. But you're a _mook_, Starfire. Mooks don't see their crimes as wrong."

"Oh... I would be very angry with this young goat that sent me to jail," she agreed.

Robin laughed, and this time, it was a real laugh. "When I said 'kid,' I didn't mean 'baby goat,' Star. We use 'kid' as another word for 'child'."

"Oh... So, if a 'kid' is a child, then what is a 'mook'?"

He continued to laugh. "Mook is another word for criminal. Like thug." His face grew serious. "But back to the explanation. If you're angry with this kid who sent you to jail, what are you going to do to him?"

"The next time I see him, I would be certain to thrash him!"

"If you knew where he based his operations, would you go there?"

She paused. "Yes."

"That's just me, Star. I've made lots of enemies that way, and I've done it for eight years now. Batman's been doing it for eleven, and he probably makes more enemies than I do on any given night."

"I understand, now." She smiled. "You may be certain that your secret is quite safe with me!"

"Thank you, Star."

She pondered for a moment and asked. "Robin, if I had asked Batman the same question, what would he have done?"

The Boy Wonder thought about that for a minute, and then said, "Probably he would have said, 'Yes. Such security is necessary,' and then continued with the tour."

"And if I'd asked why, since you and he are such nice people?"

"He would have said something like, 'not to the criminals'."

"You know your mentor very well indeed!"

Robin shrugged and smiled. "Thanks. I've lived with him for eight years... I guess I should, huh?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"Get ready," a voice from the balcony informed them. They startled— even though he had not spoken in anything louder than a whisper, Batman had pitched his voice in that special pitch that carried through the cave, regardless of volume. "We leave for patrol in twenty minutes."

Starfire rode with Robin on the R-Cycle as they sped down the cliff towards Gotham City. She enjoyed herself immensely.

"Robin, I'll take the west side. You and Starfire take the east. We'll meet at the top of the Wayne Enterprises building at one." Batman's voice crackled through the helmet, and she gasped in shock. "After that, we'll split up and tackle what we feel is needed."

"Got it," Robin said.

Robin made a turn, and then parked the R-Cycle in the shadows. He shoved the kickstand down and then tapped a button on his utility belt. Metal plates formed along the R-Cycles tires, and soon, the R-Cycle looked like a metal shell.

"Here is where we begin the ascension for the east side," Robin told her. "You can just fly up, but I use jump cables like this." He shot a cable, and soon was on top of a streetlight. He fired another cable, this one to the top of a short building. Eventually, he worked his way up to where he could reach the top of his desired building with a jumper cable.

"I could have carried you," Starfire offered.

Robin shook his head. "Thanks but no thanks, Star. I can't go soft on Batman."

After that, they started leaping rooftops. She flew, and he used acrobatics and jumper cables.

"There's a mugging in progress," he pointed down into an alley. "It's time we stopped it, eh?"

She agreed.

"Come on, bitch. Your money or your life," the mugger declared. "Time's almost up."

Robin landed silently behind him and knocked him out with a sharp kick to the man's kidneys. "That was a nasty thing to say." He slapped a pair of Birdcuffs on the man's wrists and ankles, and then contacted the police.

"Star— let's go."

And with that, it was the rooftops again.

_1:00 AM_

Starfire stood atop the Wayne Enterprises building. They had stopped eight muggings, three rapes, a B&E, and an attempt at arson.

"Well?" A gravely voice asked them.

"Does Batman always surprise his team-mates?" Starfire asked Robin, who did not look startled. She envied his knowledge of his mentor; her heart had begun to pound heavily and she'd called starbolts forth. The glow receded from her hands and her eyes stopped glowing.

"Whenever he can," Robin told her.

=====

This is a cross between a teaser and a chapter. I've got something to add to it, but I'm not sure that I won't just make that addition a whole new chapter. It all depends, really...


	2. Chapter Two

Gah. Here. Take your damn chapter two, and have a teaser for 'One Day Raven Woke Up Gay (also known as Smiling on the Outside, Crying on the Inside)'. And no, she doesn't _really_ wake up a lesbian. Though 'twould be amusing...

And to those of you who don't particularly like Batman-in-TT-animated, you might as well get the hell out, because this is about two months with Batman (and if not with Batman, in Gotham). It is also about two months of Cy and BB at BB's house.

Note to reviewers: please, if you know anything about BB's more recent past, let me know if I'm wrong about his parents and his house, and I'll see what I can do.

=====

**Return to Home**

**Chapter Two**

**1**

_November 20th, 1:00 AM_

"Does Batman always surprise his team-mates?" Starfire asked Robin, who did not look startled. She envied his knowledge of his mentor; her heart had begun to pound heavily and she'd called starbolts forth. The glow receded from her hands and her eyes stopped glowing.

"Whenever he can," Robin told her.

"I see. So what shall we 'tackle'?" The Tamaranian princess asked.

"If you want to take the north I'll take the south." Batman's voice was quiet, intimidating. "Call if you need back-up."

"Perhaps I could patrol the north alone, and you could patrol the south together?" _They'll thank me for this_, she thought smugly.

"Not a good idea," Robin told her at the same time Batman hissed, "Absolutely not!"

"You don't understand, do you?" Robin asked her. "You _still_ don't understand just how dangerous Gotham is, do you?"

Starfire held her ground. "I have seen nothing I could not handle on my own." She looked steadily at Batman. "Besides, Robin and I are approximately the same age, and he handled himself very well. If he can do so, how could I not?"

"Star, I've been working this city for eight years. I have an eight-year reputation of being a member of the Bat-family. You don't have that."

"I do not see how that renders us unequal."

"Because the criminals in Gotham will hesitate for a few precious seconds when they see Batman or me. They won't do that for you— and without it, they'll eat you alive!"

"They have not yet eaten me."

Batman suddenly moved. He stood towering over her and glared down. "I. Said. No."

She turned to Robin for aid, but he spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I'm not going to argue on your behalf. Even if I wanted to, it wouldn't help. The first rule of working with Batman is _Batman is the boss_."

She sighed. "Let us go, then, Robin."

"Wait."

They stopped.

"Starfire, come with me. Robin... fly solo."

The Boy Wonder cracked a grin. "Thanks."

"I trust you to call for back-up if you need it."

-

"So it is an issue of trust, then?" Starfire demanded as she followed Batman. He and Robin were treating her like a child! They acted as though she could not take care of herself, completely disregarding the fact that she had survived many horrors on her journey to earth!

"No. It's an issue of skill. Robin has been a protector of Gotham for eight years. That's six years longer than you've been a Titan."

"No, it is only four years longer than I have been a Titan. He formed the Titans two years ago, and therefore has not protected Gotham in two years."

He gave her a sharp look. "Enough. Catwoman may be nearby, and I'd rather you _didn't_ broadcast our location." He passed a critical eye over her clothing and muttered, "Any more than you already have."

Batman, she decided, was nowhere near as nice as Robin. How could Robin have become so nice, if Batman had raised him, and Batman was so... not-nice?

-

They captured two groups of thugs, but saw no sign of Catwoman. Starfire wondered how Batman had come by that information, but Robin's voice over the communicator interrupted her musing.

"Killer Croc sighted in North Gotham. I don't think I'll be able to take him down on my own, and he has hostages."

"Where are you in North Gotham?" Batman demanded.

In reply, Robin said something about a corner and two street names she couldn't catch.

"ETA of five minutes," Batman told him. "Don't engage until we get there."

"Too late," the Boy Wonder cheerfully quipped.

**2**

_November 17, 4:41 PM_

Cyborg followed behind Beast Boy as the green-skinned teen trudged slowly along a gravel path.

"Uh, exactly why is your HQ in a forest about twenty miles from the nearest town? What do you protect from here?" Cyborg asked, staring at the huge trees all around him.

He felt like everything around him held its breath as though something spectacular were about to happen.

"This is where I used to live," Beast Boy told him. "It's not that I protect anything in the forest... I just..." He sighed. "I needed to come here."

"Uh, weren't we supposed to be setting up at your home base?"

"This is going to be our home base."

"But what are we going to protect? The trees?"

"You'll see."

They continued along the path. Cyborg noticed that the forest began to thin after another hour of walking. After another half hour, the forest became little more than enough scattered trees to constitute sparse woodlands.

Soon enough, the end of the path came into view (just barely) and the forest had vanished.

"Five years have passed; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters! and again I hear," Beast Boy murmured the words so quietly that Cyborg had to strain his ears to make out the words, "These waters rolling from their mountain springs / With a soft inland murmur— Once again / Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs."

"What's that you're saying?"

"The first five lines of _Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey_, by William Wordsworth."

"Uh..."

The teen continued on, absently explaining, "Dad used to make me memorize classical English poetry. I used to have the first three stanzas down pat, but I forgot them. I can barely get through the first."

"I didn't know that. Did you like it?"

"Wordsworth was okay. The Lucy Poems were mushy, but _Tintern Abbey_ wasn't too bad. Just long. It's, like, four pages long."

The sight of what stood at the end of the path chased Cyborg's response from his head.

At the end of the path stood a great black gate, made of heavy iron, and hung on a brick gatepost that appeared hewn from a veritable wall of kudzu. The tops of the bars that made up the gate had nasty looking spikes on them, and someone had chained the gate shut.

"Is this your house?"

"It was," Beast Boy told him. "But nobody lives here any more, and I doubt that anybody but me even knows it exists." He retrieved a key from one of his jeans' pockets and examined the padlock on the chain. "Nothing but rust has messed with it. I figure my house is about as safe a place as any around here."

"Where are we?" Cyborg joked, "Gotham?"

Beast Boy smiled at him. "Hate to ruin your joke, but... No. We're about fifteen miles north-west of Bludhaven."

"You're kidding me, right?"

The padlock clicked open and the chains fell to the ground.

Beast Boy shoved the gates inwards, and motioned for Cyborg to follow. When Cyborg had, Beast Boy turned and locked the gates again.

"What do _you_ think?" The teen asked.

"Guess not."

Beast Boy strolled up the path and across a huge courtyard, towards an ancient, run-down mansion. Ivy appeared to have taken control of the pillars out front and some parts of the roof had crumbled away. The third-floor balcony lacked a rail on one side.

"It's been four years," Beast Boy told him.

"But the Titans have only been around for two years!"

"I left two years before that." He shot Cyborg a look that clearly said, 'Whatever happened to basic math?'

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Man, that's a lot of decay for just four years..."

"A lot can happen. This area has probably had some heavy rainfall, plus we aren't more than fifteen miles from the sea. We get a lot of squalls, and a lot of snow." The green-skinned teen paused. "And then you have to take the mansion's age into account. It's at least a hundred years old; I'm pretty sure my family was around when Bludhaven was first turning into something more than a collection of whalers' huts."

"Why doesn't anybody live here anymore?"

"They're all dead."

"Oh."

"We were on a trip, when I came down with... something. To this day, I don't know what it was. The only cure was to inject me with the DNA of various animals. That's why I have green skin and can turn into different animals." Beast Boy went quiet for a little while. "I guess they didn't catch it before it spread to my little sister. Or maybe she got it too, and they didn't know... But it spread from her, to my Mom, to Dad, and then from the family to the butler and all the other servants. The whole house died of it."

He opened the mansion door, and laughing bitterly, called, "Hey everybody, I'm home!"

His voice echoed through the empty, decaying hall, and Cyborg shivered.

"Quit it, man. That's creepy."

"Sorry. Coming back here makes me remember watching them all die. They didn't realize that it was the same disease until it was too late. Half the servants were dead, the other half were dying... the animals had caught it, too. In a month, everything here died."

Beast Boy led him soundlessly through the corridors until they arrived in another wing of the house. Here, the floorboards had rotted in some places, and the rugs had so much mildew in them that they made a weird farting noise when he stepped on them.

"We had a Roman bath in this wing... the bedrooms are in the wing two wings above it."

They finally arrived in the wing with the bedrooms, after climbing up what felt like six thousand stairs.

"They built the house at least a hundred years ago, probably closer to two or three hundred years ago, and we've been adding on to it ever since. The sections of the house are stacked on top of each other, because nobody ever wanted to tear anything down." Beast Boy told him, hardly out of breath.

Cyborg wished he could say the same for himself.

"Man... Who would have thought you were a rich kid?"

Beast Boy shrugged.

**3**

_November 20_

_Jump City_

If the silences in places had unique tones and rings, like bells, then the silence of Titan Tower would sound like Big Ben: a hearty, murky, deep tolling that instantly made it the center of attention. If only for a moment.

The 'normal' residents of Jump City would occasionally look up at the almost-empty Tower and remark at how strange it was, to view what had once been the dwelling of their super-heroes. As the citizens of Jump City recovered from the Masquerade, they had turned to the Titans more than they ever had before. The church groups got over their dislike of Raven very, very quickly, and the police soon stopped holding grudges against the Titans.

Raven stared down at the city with which Robin had entrusted her and wondered if it would last. The wind ruffled her cloak as she put one foot atop the ledge on the Tower's roof. She launched herself off, plummeting to the ground and landing gracefully.

She began to move towards the docks with a tiny smile on her face as she remembered the fun times when they had turned Titan Tower into Haunted Tower. Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come— the City Council of Jump City had, of course, made Titan Island off limits again.

It was for the best. Allowing civilians on the Island without a lot of supervision and careful planning wasn't a good idea. They could hurt themselves, interfere with something, or activate a security measure.

She arrived at her destination, blinking at the brightness of the sudden light of The Pizza Place, as locals called it. The official name was Mr. Pizza's Pizzeria, but everybody just called it The Pizza Place. Her boots made no sound against the floor as she strode to the Titans' usual table and picked up the menu.

Picking up the menu was pointless; she already knew what she wanted. She would have the exact same type of pizza that the Titans always had, in a medium, and a glass of iced tea (her dirty little secret love).

She looked anyway, but saw nothing else that interested her. So she ordered what she'd planned to.

The taste of the pizza reminded her of all the times they'd come here, and for a terrible moment, she missed them. She missed them so much it hurt.

_Calm **down**, Raven. They've only been gone for three days._

She managed to make the emotion go away in time to keep from destroying anything and then sighed as her cloak clasp began to glow.

"Excuse me, waiter?" She asked. "Could you please put this in a box and put it in your fridge? I'll be back for it."

"Sure," the waiter told her. "No problem."

"Thanks."


	3. Chapter Three

Catch the _Gargoyles_ reference and win something. And BB's backstory is going to be AU, because I simply _can't_ ignore the potential for angst, here. Apologies for lateness.

**Return to Home**

**Chapter Three**

**1**

_November 20th, __2:30 AM_

Starfire moaned as steaming hot water rained down on her skin. The heat and the pounding eased some of the tension in her aching muscles, the percussion of water sometimes beating on her bruises. It felt good, as warm water washed into her cuts and banged against her bruises— perhaps not 'felt good,' because it hurt… in a good way.

She showered for a good, long time, making sure to stay within the shower even after Batman and Robin left. She wrapped a towel around herself shortly after she turned the taps, ending the wonderful jet, and padded up the stairs.

There was no one awake to note her passing, so she headed straight to her bedroom and changed into her pajamas.

She dreamed of the long, arduous fight with Killer Croc.

_8:00 AM_

Sunlight streamed in through her open windows and Starfire groaned to be awake, her sleep-filled eyes squinting at the alarm clock.

She'd only had five hours of sleep, it seemed.

"Wake up, sunshine," somebody crooned. It sounded like Robin— no, Dick, she reminded herself.

"I am awake," Starfire informed him.

"You'd better get up soon, or no breakfast."

She nodded. "I understand."

When he left, she stood and dressed herself, careful to wear nothing similar to her garb in Jump City.

The doorbell sounded, a great, chiming sound, as she stepped down the steps.

The doorman immediately opened it, revealing another green-eyed redhead standing on the porch.

Dick entered from the hallway leading to the dining room. When he saw the other redhead, his face lit up.

"Babs, you're here!" He laughed. "Kory, meet Barbara Gordon. Babs, meet Kory Anders."

"It is a pleasure," Starfire told the other redhead, eying her warily.

She tried, to little avail, to squash the tiny spurt of jealousy within herself. Though it had been a long time since she'd felt jealousy, she recognized it instantly, remembering the way she'd felt when Kitten had forced Robin to accompany her to her Junior Prom.

Barbara smiled. "Charmed."

Dick watched them evenly. "Breakfast is ready, you know."

Breakfast turned out to be a veritable feast.

"Did Alfred prepare all of this glorious food for our consumption all on his own?" Starfire asked, staring at the laden table. She might have sworn that the wood groaned under the weight!

"Not entirely on his own," Dick laughed, easily juggling a trio of spoons. "We have hired help in the kitchen—I don't think even _Alfred_ could manage all his duties without at least five other people."

Starfire felt certain there was a phrase to describe what happened next. 'Speak of the develop and he appears,' or something like that.

Alfred appeared just behind Barbara's shoulder, looking down at the young hero.

Dick made a weak, 'heh,' sound and put the silverware back on the table.

Alfred straightened up the place settings, informed Dick of something about a 'birthday present,' and retreated.

"Dick?" Starfire asked. "Where is Bruce?"

"He's at work." She could barely make out the answer; Dick appeared to be trying to cram the entirety of three plate-sized chocolate chip pancakes into his mouth. "Today's Monday, so most people go to work and school."

"Who does not go?"

Dick's response was unintelligible, and would be so to anyone, unless it was a human custom to divine meaning from the trajectory of half-masticated chocolate chips.

"I beg pardon, but I did not understand your words. I believe the mass of pancake in your mouth obscures your speech."

Dick rolled his eyes and held up a single finger, now chewing thoughtfully on what was probably a mass of food the size of a gorilla's fist. He swallowed several times, and then explained, "People who don't have jobs, or are too young to go to school tend to stay home."

Starfire nodded. It made sense and seemed obvious now that he'd said it aloud, but he had a way of saying it so that she didn't feel bad she didn't already know. She doubted that anybody else could exhibit such patience.

"Want to go to the Gotham mall today?" Dick asked.

"Perhaps later. I am still tired right now." She eyed Barbara. "I could not sleep until late last night."

Dick laughed again. "Don't worry about Babs; she's a member of the Bat family."

"Batgirl," Barbara informed her, smiling gently. "I assume you're Starfire?"

"I am."

Alfred appeared again, just as suddenly as the first time he had come. "Master Dick, you have a telephone call."

"Excuse me," Dick said, all evidence of being anything other than a seventeen year-old courtier vanishing as he rose.

"I wonder what that was about," Barbara observed. Her merry green eyes slanted like a cat's. "Dick has a lot of friends at Gotham Prep, but none of them know that he's back yet."

"They do not? But is Mister Wayne not an important figure here?"

"He is," the older girl agreed. "But the media knows better than to follow him around unless he makes an announcement. If the Dynamic Duo haven't announced his arrival yet, then nobody knows he's here. _I_ didn't even know he was here."

Starfire made a mental note of the disappointment in Barbara's voice.

"Why are you here?" Starfire asked. "Today is Monday… how is it that you are exempt from work?"

"I'm in college; we have a week off every year so that the college can use the campus for a convention."

Dick returned and looked at his plate for the barest instant. "I'm going to go do a little research. Let me know when you're ready to leave, okay?"

"What was the purpose of your telephone call?" Starfire asked.

Dick did not miss a beat in replying, but she still felt something was wrong. "It was just a call from my younger brother, Jason. He says he's having a lot of fun spending the Wayne money."

Starfire accepted the explanation, even if something about it felt wrong.

Dick felt guilty about lying, but forced himself to push it aside. He had other things to think about.

Like why Slade had used Tim Drake, of all people, and just what he'd planned to do with the boy.

_Drake and Wayne…Their families go back a long time. Hand in hand._

Dick ignored the whispers in the back of his mind.

_Damn you, Jason Todd,_ Dick thought, scanning the bookshelves in the library for the title he sought. _Aha! There it is! _He easily scaled a ladder and grabbed the book, then performed a double backflip off the ladder. He landed perfectly atop another bookshelf.

The book fell to the floor with a loud _whomp_, and Dick soon joined it.

Within the book, he found the one thing he'd never thought could be possible.

**2**

_Logan Manor, near Bludhaven._

Cyborg stared at the sponge in his hands. His gaze returned to the wall. Then he looked back at the sponge in his hands.

There had to be an easier way to do this.

His gaze shifted from the wall to the sponge, until Beast Boy snapped, "Just do it."

"I thought everything here died?" Cyborg grumbled.

The expression that found its way onto Beast Boy's face scared him. It was like Robin in one of his Miniature Batman modes. Or like Raven when she was slipping in the fight with the Demon inside of herself.

Except Beast Boy was supposed to be the brightest of the Titans. Beast Boy and Starfire were always happy.

It was like your mother trying to chop your head off, or seeing a hated teacher in a restaurant. It was sick and unnatural and it made you want to go hide under the bed.

"Yes," Beast Boy hissed. "Everything here died. I killed my parents… my sister… my friends… the servants… the animals…"

Cyborg wasn't stupid enough to ask the logical question. He could see how close being here had brought Beast Boy to the edge.

Beast Boy's T-Communicator began to beep.

"Beast Boy… You're from the Logan family, right?" It was Robin's voice speaking, but it sounding nothing like Robin.

He sounded strained.

"Right," Beast Boy said, softly.

"What do you know about the Drake family?"

Beast Boy shrugged. "It's an old family… I think they're related to the Dracon family, up in NYC… Anyway, they were pretty rich, too, but they fell on hard times about a generation ago."

"Hm…" Robin murmured.

_Drake… Like Tim Drake? What does Robin want to know about Tim's family?_

"Do you know of any connections between the Drake and Wayne families?"

Beast Boy shrugged again. "No, but I could check. I've got a book on the rich and powerful of the Eastern Seaboard somewhere in the library."

"If it hasn't been eaten by mold," Cyborg muttered.

Beast Boy glared.

"Do you mind doing that for me? I want to double-check something I found out," Robin's voice said.

"Not at all," Beast Boy said, but there was something wrong with that voice.

Beast Boy snapped his T-Communicator shut and started down the halls.

Cyborg started at the mold-covered walls, and looked back at the sponge. He whimpered.

_I hate cleaning_.

Beast Boy found the volume he was looking for and turned to the D section.

His eyes widened at what he found.

_This could get interesting. And NOT in a good way…_

He flipped the T-Communicator open. "Robin…" His voice cracked.

"Here."

"Robin… The Drake family has ties with the Wayne family… Something about one of Bruce's great aunts marrying a Drake. And not only that, but the Drakes also have ties to the Wilson family."

"And we care why?"

"Slade Wilson."

"…Oh shit. That could… That could explain a lot of things." Robin paused. "On the other hand, Slade also could have gotten all his money for equipment from a televangelist ministry."

Beast Boy grinned weakly. "I thought _I_ was the one who made the lame jokes, eh?"

"Yeah, well, I couldn't resist." Robin paused again. "Well… If Slade was somehow related to Tim, that would explain why he let Tim live."

"Slade doesn't seem like the type to care about that."

_Then again… I killed my entire family… A whole household… And only Robin and Raven ever knew…_

_Is that why Raven hates me? Is it because I'm a murderer?_

_I hate cleaning_, Cyborg grumbled. _I hate cleaning. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. I am **never** putting on a pair of rubber gloves EVER again._

The wall made the most disgusting farting sounds he'd ever heard when he took the sponge to it. And the mold tried to close around his hand and eat it.

_Just what does Beast Boy think to accomplish? We'll never get a home base set up_.

And suddenly there Beast Boy was behind him, dark green eyes glittering, face serene.

He looked like he stepped out of a portrait of a stereotypical fifteen- year- old noble, done in green crayon, if you ignored how ratty the black jeans were and didn't notice all the holes in the shirt.

"That's enough, I think," Beast Boy said. "We're moving operations to Bludhaven, and Robin is going to arrange for a reliable cleaning crew."

"Bludhaven, huh?" Cyborg mused.

_Aw, man! That means I have to walk fifteen miles again!_

"What's it like?"

"Corrupted," Beast Boy said. "Corrupted, obscene, vicious, and completely crime-ridden. The entire town devotes itself to being the nastiest little place it can." He laughed. "Like Gizmo."

The laughter echoed eerily off the walls and Cyborg couldn't help but wonder for what must have been the thousandth time if Beast Boy was sane.

"I'll help you back, if you want," Beast Boy offered.

"Nah, that's okay. I got it." Cyborg shrugged. "So… What'd you and Robin talk about?"

"Robin thinks that Slade and the Drake family are relatives."

"If it weren't so out of character… You could almost see that as a reason for sparing Tim."

"Almost," Beast Boy agreed quietly.

**3**

_Jump__City_

Yes, Raven decided as she added just a few drops of valerian extract into her chamomile tea, if silences had rings, then the Tower's silence would sound like Big Ben.

_I'm always complaining about the noise... But now that I finally have quiet, I can't sleep._

She wanted to laugh, but she was afraid of what would happen. She wanted to cook a real meal but she had just drugged herself, and operating a stove under the influence of a sleep aid wasn't the brightest idea.

She cursed when her cloak clasp began to glow again.

But she somehow managed to pull her scattered, tired thoughts together to teleport to the disturbance.

As the raven vanished in the air behind her, returning to the shadowy depths of her soul, she noticed that no one had threatened her.

The alley was empty.

_Something's not right here_.

Her gaze traveled to the abandoned factory just a few streets away, the ugly brick building rising up above the area that she might call a slum if she felt particularly generous.

Heavy footfalls sounded— four people running, if she trusted her ears.

"Ekaitz! Heriotza! Hau zorionrako da!" Someone cried. "Hau Ekaitzrako da!"

"Ez ditugu inoiz ahaztuko." Someone else said, and the strange sounds continued.

She couldn't make sense of it. It sounded like a little like Spanish, if all the Spaniards had been on that Language Crack That Makes Languages Sound Evil about four hundred years earlier.

"Mobilizatu bonba." She heard those seven syllables quite clearly, and then she heard a blast.

The factory went up in flames.

She fought down shock and narrowed her eyes as she lifted herself a few feet of the ground and made her way to where she could hear still voices shouting with triumph.

Four people stood in another alley, making congratulatory gestures. Two of them gave each other high fives; the other two were hugging each other.

"It really worked," one of them said. Any traces of the strange accent she'd heard earlier vanished. "I can't believe it!"

Another admonished the first in a barrage of syllables, heavily accented. The only word Raven caught was "Euskara".

"Ekaitz, hau zuretzat da!"

She moved fully into the alley. "You are under arrest for destroying public property with the aid of an illegal bomb."

"Lau, zinez." One said, smirking. The others laughed.

And then they were running off. She gave chase, but she lost them.

Fury welled, and she crushed it without mercy. If they were truly terrorists and not just a bunch of crazy kids who refused to speak English in public, they would strike again.

She landed at the Tower's entrance and blinked several times.

There, on the front walk, was a bowl of red Jell-O. It came with a large placard, reading, "Ongi pasa!"

Sometimes I wake up in the morning

The gingerlady by my bed

Covered in a cloak of silence

I hear you in my head

—_A Rainy Night in __Soho_, THE POGUES


	4. Chapter Four

**Return to Home**

**Chapter Four**

**1**

_November 21st_

_Gotham City, about 10PM_

"Batgirl, Starfire, take the north. Robin, take the west. I'll take east and south." Batman's gravelly voice intoned.

Robin nodded and headed to the west side of Gotham, his stomach fluttering briefly, as he thought of Starfire essentially on her own. Amazing as Batgirl was, she wasn't as well respected by the criminals of Gotham. Batgirl wouldn't be able to make sure Starfire stayed safe the way he or Batman could.

_Maybe this wasn't such a good idea_, he thought.

But then he fired a jump cable, and that amazing feeling of flying once more took over him.

There was nothing like launching jump cables through Gotham. No city in the world could match this town. Shadow converged on the gothic architecture, lending it a drama and darkling appeal rather similar to Raven's.

_Raven. Now there's another matter. She hasn't given me any sort of report. Something could be wrong…_

He launched another jump cable and swooped down on a pair of muggers. _You'd think they'd learn not to lurk in alleys right off the clubbing strip._

He handcuffed them and hung them from a streetlight, then moved on.

Batman's voice over the communicator demanded a report.

He gave it, and then amended it.

Those shadows by that building were just a little too thick, a little too dark, to be genuine.

A break in.

He moved closer, his footsteps nearly inaudible.

He caught as flash of purple and gray, and his breath hissed through his teeth.

_Catwoman._ The infamous, beautiful thief with a bizarre fixation on Batman.

_Well_, he thought. _At least it's _me_ facing her and not Starfire._

Funny how that didn't make him feel any better.

He slipped even closer and was only a couple of meters away from her when she noticed him.

"Well, _well_," she purred, "what have we _here_?"

"Just breaking in, or have you already stolen something?" As far as he could tell, she had nothing new on her person.

She laughed softly, cracked her whip playfully. "You've been away for such a long time… I think that Bat missed you…"

"Ah, so you haven't stolen anything yet." Robin expanded the telescopic staff.

"And with a new weapon I see." She hissed. "Daddy must be _so_ proud!"

The whip snapped towards him.

He heard a light _ping_ as the metal tip of the singletail rebounded off his staff.

"So you've gotten a new weapon, too," he snarled.

They circled each other, their steps light, quick, sounding out on the roof like the staccato steps of tango dancers.

Snap-crack-ping! Snap-crack-ping! Snap-crack-ping! Step-step-step. Snap-crack-ping! Step-step. Snap-ping!

"Only an upgrade," she murmured in reply, but her voice sounded a little breathy, as though she were a bit out of breath.

He swept the staff out and it collided with her leg. He heard a sharp crack and Catwoman went down on the balcony, but before he could handcuff her, she had lashed out again.

This time, the battle began in earnest. He could barely keep up with her flurry of lashes.

She had a hard time evading all of his attempts at striking with the staff, however.

He had to admit that he wasn't surprised when she leapt off the balcony and vanished into the night.

She still outclassed him, even after two years of leading his own team, sharpening his skills.

Of course she did. It had always been up to Batman to stop Catwoman. Batman was the one who was evenly matched with her, skill for skill.

Well, except for one.

But at this rate, he would never catch her. So he slipped into the building to make sure she hadn't stolen anything.

**2**

_November 22nd_

_Bludhaven_

Beast Boy looked around him and snorted. _And on the sixth day there was snow_, he thought to himself. But he said nothing aloud; his shifting the paperboy satchel on his shoulders was the only hint as to his thoughts, and that gesture was a poor indicator of moods.

Members of the Doom Patrol might have been able to read him from that gesture.

But they were dead.

"Ring out the grief that saps the mind/ For those that here we see no more; / Ring out the feud of rich and poor," he mumbled to himself, "Ring in redress to all mankind."

"What was that?" Cyborg asked, the blue and white lights flashing a bit in the sun. "More poetry? Who would have thought you knew poetry."

Beast Boy shoved the old anger down, the wish that the other Titans would acknowledge him as having more intelligence than the meager amount with which they credited him. Cyborg truly didn't understand that the Logan family had educated him quite well; the mix of man and machines had never had to dim what he was for the amusement of others.

_Raven would understand… Robin would understand, if he's ever had to live a "normal" life…_

They would understand that he did it for them. Someday.

The snow crunched under their feet as they made their way towards the apartment he had leased (and he'd leased it with only a little help from Robin. If that didn't say something to Cyborg, Cyborg needed to have his head bashed in).

It took them forever (it _felt_ like forever) to find the apartment building and get inside.

Cyborg's metal plating fogged up and Beast Boy resisted the urge to laugh like hell. He could do that when they got inside the apartment without breaking the door handle.

"Man, BB, what is it with you and dirty, disgusting places?" Cyborg wondered aloud as they opened their creaky door and stepped into an apartment that was only slightly less dilapidated than the Logan Manor.

"They're cheaper," Beast Boy replied. "Robin's hired a professional cleaning crew. This place will do until they're done."

He ignored the insult to his manor. After all, Cyborg hadn't seen it when it was at its best, had he? If he had, he would know that Logan Manor could never be dirty or disgusting— but it could certainly need a bit of work.

"Waitaminute," Cyborg said suddenly. "What's all this _stuff_ doing here? Like the couch, the TV, the lamps…"

"Pre-furbished."

Beast Boy moved to the bedroom and smiled at the twin beds, each on an opposite side of the room. "I call the right side of the master room," he said, smiling at a memory that had begun to play behind his eyes.

"BB, are you feeling alright?" He heard Cyborg ask the question, but he couldn't see him over the sudden sight of his sister swinging in the backyard.

**3**

_Jump City, CA_

_November 22._

Raven stared at the Jell-O she had analyzed. According to all of the sophisticated equipment, the red Jell-O was just that: red Jell-O, a food that was so obviously chemical rather than organic (like marshmallow cream and cool whip) that she didn't even want to contemplate eating it.

Her gaze slipped from the Jell-O to the card she'd found beside it, the plain white card with "Ongi Pasa" written on it.

After a huge search through hundreds of thousands of online dictionaries, she'd finally found a match: 'enjoy yourself'.

In Basque.

_So I'm facing a bunch of Basque-speaking terrorists, who blew up an abandoned warehouse and left me red Jell-O… without even the common sense to poison it._

She sighed. _Great. And my report to Robin is late. I'd better go make it._

But even as she moved towards her T-communicator, an explosion rocked the city. She went sprawling.

"Let me guess. My Basque friends," she muttered through clenched teeth.

_I hate it when I'm right_, she thought as she stared at the rubble of the Mayor's house.

"My house!" The Mayor wailed. "My house!"

"Shut up," she hissed tersely. "I know who bombed your house. I'll find them, arrest them, and the insurance will cover your house."

The Mayor eyed her with an obviously distrustful look. After all, she knew that he'd been involved in Slade's plan, mostly out of hatred of vigilantes, and that he'd tried to force the Titans to disband.

But he said nothing further. He merely turned away and began dialing a number on her cell phone.

She squared her shoulders and created a portal to the warehouse that the strange group had blown up.

She found nothing there, so she continued to the alley where she had encountered them.

Someone had left a manhole open, something that was technically illegal.

_Idiots_, she thought. _This must be a bunch of amateurs_.

But as she approached it, another thought occurred to her.

_Maybe it's a trap._

She shrugged. With such a bunch of strange people, she could probably handle any trap they set. And if it turned out to be _too_ much, she could always teleport back to the Tower, or perhaps even straight to Gotham.

She plunged into the manhole.


	5. Chapter Five SOMEWHAT SHORT

**Return to Home **

**Chapter Five **

**1**

_November 22 _

_Jump__ City_

Raven dropped into the sewers, making sure not to let her feet touch the ground.

That would have made noise, and she really, _really_ couldn't afford noise right now.

The expected sewer-smell and the less-expected smell of the sea filled her nose. She neither sighed nor gasped. Instead, she stopped and listened. She heard nothing besides the distant rushing of sewer water. Apparently, this wasn't a trap.

Along the walls, someone had traced a pink line with what was probably chalk.

Pink chalk. Not the city government, then, or even somebody who had a good excuse to be down here. The city government would have used flourescent yellow spray paintless chance of rubbing off, and less water-soluble.

But could a decent group of terrorists _really_ be so stupid as to mark out the path to their headquarters?

_This smells like a trap._

On the other hand, they'd left her Jell-O.

These people were just plain weird, she decided as she followed the trail. It led to a wonderfully confusing fork in the road, a fork with about six different prongs.

Unfortunately, they weren't stupid enough to write "secret lair: this way" on any of the paths.

She decided to decide the good old-fashioned way: she stopped and listened again. In the distance, she heard laughter.

She followed the sound, hoping the dark colors of her leotard and cloak would hide her from any sentries. If worst came to worst, she would stand and fight, but she really didn't want to have to fight her way out of the sewers.

She caught a glimpse of some of the muck on the ground. The footsteps of many, many people had worn out a trail in the grime, but she felt sorry for whoever had been the first to walk there, and glad that she could hover.

At length, she reached the group's presumed headquarters. She waited in the tunnel outside, as there were at least ten people in the room, and few objects with which to attack them.

"Now listen," a young woman said. "In the airports and on the planes, you _must_ use English."

"But you said we weren't to use English in public."

Raven couldn't see the dissenter, but the young woman whirled in what was probably his direction.

"Do you want to blow the cult open? Do you? If you do, best of luck. I hope youwell" The woman stopped for a moment and looked down. When she looked up again, she wore a sick, bitter smile. "Ongi pasa!"

The others in the group laughed and took it up as some sort of chant.

_Ongi pasa!_

They had written that on the card that they'd left with the Jell-O.

Just what did it mean?

And who were these people? Some kind of crazy fire-worshipping religion? She hoped so. They didn't _sound_ like members of one of the thousands of sects of the Church of Raven, but there were so many variations, you could never really be sure.

"Now, rememberGotham has Batman. He's not an amateur, so probably he'll figure out we're there _before_ the twenty-third incident. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he speaks the Language."

There was somethjing seriously wrong here.

They wanted to blow things up in Gotham? Were these people _insane_? What in the world did they think they were doing?

She moved away. Now wasn't the time to try to arrest them. There were too many.

Already, the woman had begun some sort of war cry.

She had to warn Batman, Robin and Starfire.

She teleported to the Tower, her heart beating quickly and especially loudly in her ears.

**2**

_November 22_  
_Gotham__ City: Gotham City Boys Preparatory, Jr. High Campus, 3:07 PM_

Tim Drake calmly adjusted his tie until he no longer felt as though it were strangling him. 

Tim called out a goodbye to his only new friend at Gotham Prep, Blaise. Blaise laughed and waved back, heading off towards the station with the school's bus.

"Tim!" Someone cried.

It wasn't any of the people he knew from Gotham Prep, but he recognized the voice anyway.

He'd know that voice anywhere.

He turned to see a dark-haired young man standing near the exit from the school grounds.

The youth had eyes so vivid a blue that Tim could tell their color from paces away.

The boy flashed a quick, brilliant smile.

Tim remembered that, too. That smile still shone on a poster hanging on Tim's bedroom wall.

Robin.

"Tim!" Robin called again.

Tim headed over. "Hey, Dick! Why are you here?"

Robin looked confused for a momentor was that just because he'd gone pale?but quickly returned to normal.

"I need you to come with me," Robin said. "I think I may have figured out why Slade let you live."

"Really?" Tim asked. "Is it something I want to know?"

_Translation: Is it horrifying or will it put me and my family in danger?_

"Take a ride with me. I'll tell you in the car."

Tim followed Robin to the car. The car happened to be a red Corvette convertable, the kind of sports car most seventeen year olds could only dream about.

His father had promised him that he would have a 'vette, when he got his license.

"Why?" He demanded as soon as the passenger door slammed closed behind him and Robin had pressed the button that unwound the top.

_Gotham__ City__: Wayne Manor, 5:22 PM_

"What do you mean he isn't home from school yet?" Dick shouted into the phone.

None of the answers he received were satisfactory, or even something approaching it, and the receiver soon joined the cradle with a slam.

Moments later, his T-Communicator began playing its usual tune.

He flipped open the top

Raven's face appeared on the tiny screen.

"Robin," she hissed.

He suddenly felt glad of the fact that he had put on his mask.

"Raven. Report."

Her report was concise, clear— and chilling.

"You've got to be. . . But you don't. . . ."

"This isn't a joke."

"I know." He sighed heavily. "Any word from Beast Boy and Cyborg?"

"None."

It wasn't surprising.

"Have you come any closer to solving our friendly neighborhood mystery?"

"A little. Drake and Slade are related."

"No."

"Yes. Tim's his great nephew by marriage, once removed."

Raven said nothing.

This was one of those revelations there just _was_ no witty comeback for.

"Robin. . . I. . ."

"I know. I don't think he would have spared Tim because they were related."

"Somehow, I don't either."

"I have bad news."

"What?"

"I think Tim's been kidnapped again."

"By whom?"

"I don't know."

"Not Slade--- it can't be. Slade is dead."

"He's escaped from death before."

"And he's _faked_ that escape before."

"Maybe it wasn't Slade in Jump City. Slade would have _had_ to have been stupid to stay in Jump City during the Masquerade."

"True. . . But . . . You fought him, and he died from the Masquerade."

"It could easily be a robot or a clone."

"You know what they say about the simplest explanation being the best. I don't think Slade did this."

"But who else would want Tim?"

"Robin. THINK. OBJECTIVELY."

He sighed, then cleared his mind of all the possibilities he had come up with so far. He forced himself to look at the case from an open perspective.

It was then that he realized that they would need more evidence before he could begin to hazard a guess.

He stared at the darkness outside. After a moment, he jerked his gaze away from the distant lights of the city and looked at the clock.

Wayne would arrive home soon, and soon after that, Alfred would serve dinner, after which they would suit up and head out.

He could hardly wait. Starfire was growing used to Gotham, was growing more effective with criminals.

He loved watching her work.

"We'll need more evidence," Robin murmured to Raven.

"I know. But you'll know when the Drake family reports Tim missing again, won't you?"

"I'll know immediately."

"Keep me informed. Because if he was kidnapped, we can both guess why."

Yes, that they could.

His identity.

He closed the connection with a curt dismissal. It was only when he was sure that Raven couldn't see him that he allowed himself to shiver.

He found Starfire squatting in the hall, staring into a shadowy corner.

If Alfred caught her sitting in the floor. . .

"Star."

She looked up. "I thought I saw Silkie."

"You left him in Raven's care."

"I am unsure that was wise. . ."

He sighed and pulled her to her feet, explaining as he did so why she couldn't sit on the floor.

"It will be time to suit up and go out soon."

"Oh, wonderful! How splendid! How soon shall it be?"

"After Bruce comes home and we've all eaten dinner."

"Can we not eat dinner in our costumes, once? As we did in the Tower?"

"I doubt it," Robin answered.

Starfire's face fell. "Friend Robin, I miss the camaraderie of the Titans."

"I know."

But as a vigilante, he had been born to this--- working almost completely alone, relying mostly on himself. He missed his friends, but he didn't miss working on a team. So he didn't tell her that he did, too. He'd told her enough lies, lately.

She floated away, head hanging.

And suddenly, he found himself missing Raven's self-sufficiency.

_I need her in Jump City_, he thought, knowing she was the only one with anything like his detective training, _but I _want_ her here._

He wasn'tsure if that shocked him or not.

* * *

Apologies for the lateness. Updates should be a bit more regular; for a while, at least.

I know it's not as long as my usual chapters, please forgive me for that. My hands hurt and I don't have any Magic Writing Juice right now. I can write Robin and Raven any day of the week, but writing my Beast Boy requires a certain mood. This is probably because my Beast Boy is a little bundle of emotions, insanity, horrible memories, clichéd pleasant memories, and probably some string, all held together with tofu and vegetarianism.

I know this sounds greedy, but please review! It lets me know that I'm reaching my audience.


	6. Chapter Six

**Return to Home**

**Chapter Six**

**1**

_November 23rd  
__Bludhaven, 4:40 PM_

Beast Boy looked up at the sky. Thin, gray, dreary. Water dripped from above, smog floated from various smokestacks.

He had never liked the city. Even as a child, he had hated Bludhaven. Speaking honestly, who wouldn't?

On the couch, Cyborg sighed. "So what exactly are we supposed to be doing, here?"

But Beast Boy had no reply to give.

_Heaven above, earth below  
__When a dragon sings fog is formed_

_When a tiger roars the wind rises  
__A grand, motherly, kindness  
__To contemplate the lotus_

What did some fake mission matter when you could see your dead sister playing outside in the rain?

She'd never played in the rain, when she was alive. She hated getting wet. He remembered, once, one of the hired help had turned on the sprinklers and set them out in the yard. Beast Boy had laughed and played in them, but she...

For forty-five minutes, his younger sister had taken tentative steps towards the hissing water, but had retreated time and again.

So why was she out there, playing in the rain? She was dead. Dead people did not wander around the dangerous streets of Bludhaven when it was raining and the smog factories were at top production. Especially if said dead people had never liked getting wet when they were alive.

"She's going to get sick," Beast Boy murmured. "And she never liked rain, anyway."

"Uh, BB? What are you talking about? You see someone out there that you know?"

Cyborg rose, began to move over to the window.

_No._

"No!" Beast Boy closed the curtains, the metal rings tinkling harshly on the curtain rod. The room went dark abruptly. He ignored it and turned away from the window. "No, I didn't see anybody."

"Then what were you talking about?"

_Come on__, come on. Think of a convincing lie._

"I was just reciting aloud. Didn't mean to. You know...?" The words were rushing out of him, pouring like metallic water out of a rusty drain. Like blood out of an arterial wound. Like shit out of your asshole when you had diarrhea.

"You know I used to memorize things right? It was just words from a song my sister used to like. Sometimes the stuff I memorize comes back to me like a song you get stuck in your head. Ever had that? It's the worst when all you remember is the words, but not the tune so you can't even sing it."

Cyborg only stared at him. That was okay. Cyborg could think he was lying. That he had a crush.

Stupid teenaged hormonal drama shit. But Cyborg would back off for now.

As Cyborg headed back to the couch and Beast Boy headed to make sure that he had locked the door, a sudden thought occurred to him.

Except the instant he had it, it just rushed straight out of his brain, like a train knocking an eighteen-wheeler out of its path. Just kaboom, gone.

All it took was the image of a little red ball rolling down the hallway— a red ball that couldn't possibly be there, because that ball had been on the street and rolled and rolled and rolled until it hit the wreckage and got stuck on something sharp and deflated with a sound that was something like a cross between Cyborg farting and a balloon popping.

He had watched it, at his tender age. He had watched it and gotten caught somewhere between wishing it had sounded louder, more like the scream he wanted to make, and wishing it had been softer, less like the BANG-BANG-BANG of that _thing_.

He had killed an entire family, and not just his own, by his mere presence on a mostly empty street.

And wasn't that the craziest bullshit of all?

**2**

_November 23rd  
__Gotham City, 8:21 PM_

This is life: eat dinner, put on a ridiculous costume, go out at night to illegally fight crime, come home.

They started to head out, into the red-skied yonder, where crazy criminals committing crazy crimes awaited.

Except tonight, there was a break from routine.

"Robin. Stay here. If Tim Drake has really been kidnapped—"

"—What!" Starfire gasped. "Robin, you did not inform me of this!"

...Oh shit. He hadn't, had he?

"Uh, Star? Can we talk about that later?"

"No, Robin, we obviously must talk about this now. At this very moment. Am I not your partner? Your friend? Your teammate? Did you learn nothing from your masquerade as Red-X?"

Robin looked away. Little as he wanted to admit it, Starfire had a point.

"I was going to tell you. . . I just never found the time."

_You were always on my mind. I just never found the time._

Starfire turned away, too.

And Batman stood in the shadows, silent. Watching. Waiting for the tension to come to a head. But if they didn't resolve this soon, Batman would have them delay the issue and get back to business.

"Starfire. . . I wasn't trying to hide things from you, okay? I just never found the right time to tell you."

Starfire looked up at him. Those vivid green eyes were so wide. . . She gave him a slow look. "You are forgiven."

She didn't say, _This__ time._ She didn't need to say it. They both knew it.

"Robin, get on the Cray and see if Tim Drake really has been kidnapped. Hack into the Boys' Prep security cameras if you must. Check the Drake family security cameras, too. If he _is_ missing, alert the police. They might be able to get a better idea of what's going than we will. . . For a little while."

Robin nodded.

"Starfire. Come with me. You and Batgirl are going out patrolling together. I'll assign your section of the city when we get to the clock tower."

And with that, with the swirl of a black cape and a brief, dim flash of red in the darkness, they were gone.

Robin turned to the Cray. It sat against the wall, acting like the obstinate computer it was.

The first thing he did was hack the Drake security. That was easy enough, even if he wasn't a whiz at programming and hacking. The Drake family hadn't exactly made it hard for somebody who could hack the Watchtower if he really, really, _really_ wanted to and wanted to die a gruesome death by Batman.

Close examination of the surveillance tapes showed no signs of Tim Drake. Robin thought he saw movement in one frame, so he zoomed in, slowed it down and replayed it.

It was nothing. Just the shadow of a security guard.

Inspection, with digital enhancements, of all the vehicles that pulled up to the Drake manor revealed that Tim hadn't shown up at home.

After that, he hacked into the Boys' Prep security cameras. He checked the high school security blocks. None of them revealed a thing. Except.

HS Lot A3. Special van services to provide the sons of Gotham's crème de la crème with rides home.

It showed Tim calling out to some boy. And then he turned and saw another person. The other person waved him down. Robin couldn't see the face, because some sort of plastic suit covered it. Rather like the one Ventrix had worn as an invisibility suit.

Tim walked over to the other person, looking dazed. The other person (whom Robin labeled as "Plastic Face") led Tim to a car.

It was a white van. Well, he assumed it was white. Plastic Face had coated it with the same stuff he wore, so he couldn't tell. After running the tape through the a few image filters, he managed to make out the numbers on the license plate on the front of the vehicle. It read NGI-925. It was an out of state tag. New York.

Robin pulled up a new window with access to New York's DOT. He entered a false employee ID and pin number, then entered the plate number. He doubted the license plate was real, but if he could find someone who had a van stolen, it would be a start.

He turned back to the tape.

The van was beat-up and dirty, but Tim ran his hands along the exterior like a boy caressing his first car. The sight made Robin shudder. It was like watching a lamb go frolicking to the slaughterhouse.

Plastic Face opened the door for Tim. Tim got in. In the van, just barely visible through the windshield, something moved.

Robin zoomed in, ran the image through several programs with numerous filters, and replayed the movement.

A woman moved from the back of the van, a huge knife in her fist, to caress Tim's face and neck, as well as jam the edge of the blade into his neck.

Apparently blissfully unaware that a crazy woman could at any minute slice open his jugular, Tim laughed. He seemed to be in a dreamlike state. He chatted with Plastic Face, a relaxed expression on his face.

Robin watched the tape, sickened. This was crazy bullshit, this was.

It was at this moment that his T-Communicator began to play its little tune.

"Robin."

"Yo, Robin, it's Cyborg. I've got some bad news, and I've got some worse news. Which do you want first?"

"Worse news."

"Okay, then. I think BB's going insane."

Robin blinked. What did you say to that? What did you _do_ when somebody confronted you with the fact that one of your team was. . .

They remained silent for a little while.

"How crazy?" Robin asked. When he spoke, his voice sounded cracked. Hoarse.

"Really crazy. Dangerous crazy. I think he's losing his grip on reality."

Robin closed his eyes, inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. His fists clenched. "And the bad news?"

"The bad news is that I have no idea what we're supposed to be doing here. I mean. . . Just what is there to protect around here?"

"The same thing we had in Jump City: civilians."

"This isn't Jump City, Robin. This isn't even half as nice as Gotham. Do you understand? It would take the entire Justice League combined to put the barest dent in the shit from the black lagoon we've got here."

Bludhaven couldn't be _that_ bad, could it? Robin mentally filed away that tidbit for future use. He wasn't sure when he would need to use it, but it might just come in handy someday.

"I honestly don't think we can do much good here, Robin. Why don't Beast Boy and I head to Stone City? Titans East could probably do with some help."

The Cray pinged, at he looked up at the screen. The program trolling New York's DOT had pulled up a match for the plate.

Sean David Couch, born in 1978, registered his vehicle in 2000. Robin pulled up yet another new window, this time hacking into the West Babylon police database. The vehicle registration number and license plate number pulled up, oddly enough, no match on search for stolen vehicles. And according to the West Babylon PD, Sean Couch hadn't reported his vehicle missing.

"Robin? Are you there?"

"I'm here. . . I just think I may have found the guy who kidnapped Tim Drake."

". . .Somebody kidnapped Tim? Why would they want to do that? Ransom?"

Cyborg didn't know that Tim knew his identity, it seemed.

"I'm not sure." _It could be because Tim knows my identity, but. . ._ "They haven't made any demands, yet, so there's really no telling."

Cyborg sighed. "Much as that sucks, I know you can find him. Now, back to _my_ problem. I have no idea what I'm doing in Bludhaven. I can't do any good in this place. BB isn't exactly helping, if you know what I mean."

"Just. . . Stay there for now, okay? I'd be fine with you heading back to Jump City if Raven didn't have something complicated going on down there right now."

"Something complicated? What the hell you talking about?"

"Apparently, she's dealing with some sort of terrorist cult thing. They gave her Jell-O."

"And this is a bad evil nasty cult, how?"

"Well, they blew up an abandoned building."

"That's illegal, yes, but it's not bad, evil, or nasty. So they're bad guys, how, exactly?"

"And they're headed to Gotham at some point. Not sure when, but they're definitely coming this way."

"Coming to Gotham isn't a crime. If _living_ in Gotham isn't a crime, then visiting it can't be."

"Doesn't it strike you as suspicious that a cult that likes to blow things up and refuses to speak English in public has purchased tickets to Gotham city?"

Cyborg paused for a moment. His face relaxed into a thoughtful expression. "Not really, no."

Robin pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Some people just didn't get it.

**3**

_November 23rd  
__Jump City, 5:23 PM_

Raven logged into the computer in the evidence locker. With deceptive calm, she hacked into the Jump City airport records, looking for recent mass ticketing on flights to Gotham. She activated a program that would trace credit and debit card numbers back to their real bank accounts.

The presumed leader of the cult had handed out plane tickets. . . But they might have been smart enough to purchase all the tickets under different names or accounts.

As it turned out, the leader hadn't.

_Teenagers. So naive._

Raven couldn't think of a reason to purchase eighteen tickets to Gotham on the same flight, all seats located near each other. Especially if you purchased them all under the pretext of "ZORION Children's Home & Language Institute".

The cult had purchased tickets on a flight that left the next day.

Raven swore. In one of the cabinets in the evidence locker, her bowl of red Jell-O quivered like. . . Well, a gelatinous substance. With the sudden wrath she felt, it should have exploded in gelatinous red lumps like bits of flesh, but brighter red.

She flipped open her T-Communicator, contacted Robin.

"They're headed out for Gotham tomorrow. And they can make indestructible Jell-O."

"I'll see if I can send the Bat-Jet out for you. Pack your things. Wayne will land you a commercial flight if Batman won't part with the jet." Robin paused. "And bring that Jell-O with you, will you? I've got to see this."

"Understood. I'll head out tomorrow, then."

Robin moved away from his communicator for a moment. When he returned, he informed her, "Alfred will fly out almost immediately. Pack now. He should be there within three to four hours."

The Bat-Jet was considerably faster than most planes she'd heard of, then. Then again, it was a _jet_. Jets were by nature faster.

* * *

_Jump City, 10:02 PM_

She stood on the roof of the Tower. Behind her, the pool's metal cover retracted back over the pool with a groaning sound. She had shut down pretty well everything in the Tower. She had sent all its electricity-requiring functions into hibernation, except (of course) for the security system. She'd even turned off the Jacuzzi.

Something black swept through the sky, and then landed on top of the roof. The force of the jet's landing shook the roof and jarred her bones.

The engines didn't even cut completely off, but a white-haired old man lifted the jet's hatch and kicked out a staircase.

"Miss Raven, I presume?" The man inquired. "I am Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne family butler. I do believe you have already packed your bags and are ready to go?"

He had a British accent. A very nice, very cultured British accent. And he didn't so much look _old_ as. . . Well. . . Respectable? Venerable, maybe.

She nodded.

"Please, allow me to take your bag. And do watch your step as you go in. The third step from the bottom doesn't always stay secure."

The British man took her bag. It was a gentle, polite action, but somehow firm, as well.

"In the miniature refrigerator, I have a salad ready to toss and dress. I'm afraid that making tea won't be possible on this trip, but I prepared iced tea before I left."

Alfred. The guy with the British accent who'd only called once or twice. A week. When he wasn't nearly dying from a heart attack over worry for "Young Mah-stah Robin." When he _was_ nearly dying from worry, it was more like once or twice a day.

Robin had described him as a serious mother hen, and Raven couldn't help but agree with that description as Alfred expertly tossed and dressed the salad he'd refrigerated and then poured her some iced tea.

"Alfred," Robin's voice murmured from the speakers. "Titan Tower defense systems say you've landed. What's the situation?"

"Miss Raven and I are settling in. We will take off in perhaps five more minutes."

"Good. You in there, Raven?"

"I'm here."

"Do you have the Jell-O?"

Raven laughed. She pulled her bag out of the seat next to her and unzipped it. She then pulled several dozen plastic and zip-lock bags off of a metal container. She lifted the container's lid.

Alfred's left eyebrow rose. She stretched so she could see the com screen. In it, Robin's eyes widened. And in the background, Batman was glaring at the _thing_ she held in her left hand.

"Is that carnivorous?" Robin asked.

"It hasn't eaten me yet. But it is indestructible."

They nattered for a few minutes as Raven calmed her nerves about spending four hours in a relatively cramped space (sure, the Bat-Jet was nice, but it was still a _jet_. You could only go so far adding luxury to the design before you started losing what made it a jet: speed) with a man who was basically Robin's grandfather. Or second mother. Or something like that.

After they put the comlink in silent mode, Raven only got about fifteen minutes of silence. During that time, she fidgeted and tried to meditate, but she just couldn't seem to clear her mind.

Behind her, the bright lights of Jump City began to fade. The shape of Titans Tower blurred.

Had she abandoned her duty to Jump City by leaving for Gotham? And what could possibly await her there? Starfire would probably find herself torn between annoyed that Raven just couldn't seem to stay away from Robin and being overjoyed that there was another girl in the house.

But what about Batman? What would he think of her? Would it matter? Was he as cruel as Starfire seemed to think (and this was mostly based on emails passed between the two).

When Raven's fifteen minutes of far from restful silence ended, she knew by the strange sound coming from her bag.

That sound could only mean one thing: Silkie. That crazy little moth/caterpillar-eating machine-thing had found a way into her bag. Just as well, really. Starfire would have bawled for days if Silkie died of starvation.

Considering Silkie's apparent ability to digest _absolutely anything_, Raven doubted he was capable of starving, but still.

She unzipped the bag. Silkie crawled (more like oozed, but referring to it as 'crawling' helped minimize the emotional trauma) onto her torso and curled up in her arms.

"Dare I inquire just what that is?"

"It's a giant bug. Named Silkie. Want to know more, talk to Starfire."

Alfred took one look at the little off-white creature and turned back to flying the jet.

"Mr. Pennyworth—"

"—Oh heavens, child, I don't think anyone's called me 'Mr. Pennyworth' in years. Please, call me Alfred."

Raven caught a glimpse of the desert surrounding Jump City. The Los Muertos Desert, though the locals had nicknamed it Los Muertos.

"Alfred, then. Do you have anything to sweeten this tea with?" She hadn't touched the tea until a moment ago.

Alfred pressed a series of buttons and keys at the console, and then stood up. He strode straight to a flight cubby, unlocked its hatch and pulled out a porcelain jar with a large spoon attached.

_Porcelain? On a jet?_

But when she lightly touched the jar with her power, she realized that it wasn't porcelain. It was merely a heavy opaque plastic.

Two large spoonfuls of sugar— and that was real sugar, too, judging by the graininess of it— dumped into the pitcher of iced tea. Alfred stirred it up, then replaced the pitcher's lid.

"And how much would you like in your glass?" He asked. "Will a tablespoon do it?"

Raven flushed. "You don't have to do it for me."

Alfred gave her a long, patient look. It said it all, really: _you are a guest. I am a butler. This is what I do. This is what I _like_ to do, and I won't hear of things being done any other way._

"A tablespoon is fine."

He withdrew a spoon from another locked cabinet and added it to her glass.

Here is life also: he serves, you thank him, he tells you that you're quite welcome and goes back to his original business.

Somehow, they started talking. She wasn't sure when or how, but they did. He told her amusing stories about Robin when he was a small child. She told him amusing stories about Robin in the Titans.

It was as if they were trading off Robins. Comparing notes. Gaining each other's knowledge of him.

And then the peace shattered. Silkie, who had wriggled out of her arms, made a horrible screeching sound.

She looked down at it. Some sort of red, gelatinous, liquid dribbled from the moth-caterpillar-larva-thing's mouth. Not far from Silkie at all, the Invincible Jell-O quivered and oozed itself back into shape, like Plasmus healing a wound.

Silkie had tried to eat the Jell-O. The Jell-O had resisted the attempt.

Raven didn't know if she should have been horrified or amused.

* * *

Well, there you go. Got it up even earlier than I thought I would. Next chapter should be here before June 3 2005, too. And I finally got a list of all the fic ideas I have. I'm thinking of assigning days on which topost updates of my fics. Weekly work will be good for me, and I'll get a lot more done that way. 


	7. Chapter Seven TEASER 2

****

**Return to Home**

**Chapter Seven: Teaser Number Two**

**1**

_November 24th_

_Gotham City, 2:03 AM_

Starfire stood as close to the place where the jet would land as she safely could.

Robin stood with her, nearly touching her.

Such a large amount of such potent happiness filled her that she had trouble keeping both of her feet on the ground. The instant she moved her attention to other things, she would find that one foot or another had lifted into the air.

"Is this not a time of great joy?" She queried.

Batman looked over at them. He stared at her for what she decided was the longest second of her life, then looked back at the sky.

"Not really," Robin murmured in her ear.

The thought of those luscious lips so close to her ear brought her straight back to the ground. Some joys exceeded even the sky.

"Why not? Does seeing Friend Raven again not gladden your heart?"

"Oh, I'll be happy to see her again. . . But her needing to be here isn't a good thing."

"I take your meaning. You speak of the people who have caused conflagrations in warehouses."

"Yeah. The cultists. They're going to come to Gotham today, and it's not going to be pretty."

The thought of such people attacking Robin's home sent her straight back to the ground. She could imagine what he must be feeling. Surely his breath now caught in his throat the way her own did when she thought of other races assailing Tamaran.

Minutes slid by like hours, like days.

Like centuries.

And then, the humming. The humming sounded really, Starfire reflected, less like "hmmmm" and more like "grimmmmm."

In the sky, a dark jet appeared from the west. With agonizing slowness, the jet maneuvered itself into a landing position, and then landed.

It handled, from what she understood, rather like a helicopter.

And then the hatch lifted up. Somebody kicked out a staircase. A cloaked figure rushed down the steps, moving so quickly as to almost be tumbling headlong.

Starfire rushed forward. "Friend Raven!"

The cloaked figure straightened, clearly startled.

Starfire's arms closed around the figure's shoulders. The figure had the appropriate stature, and felt light and brittle as a bundle of twigs in her arms.

"Starfire!" Raven choked.

"It is wonderful to have you here!"

". . . You're glad to see me?"

"Oh, but of course, Friend Raven! You are my friend!"

Friend Raven rewarded her with a tiny smile. "Speaking of friends, look who I brought you."

From somewhere within that cloak, Raven produced a certain adorable off-white body. When the off-white little body caught sight (or perhaps scent; she had never determined his primary sense) of her, he released an overjoyed squeal.

Starfire released the same overjoyed little squeal, snatching Silkie and spinning around with him in her arms.

"My lovely little grothnos! My chahimkar-eyed little glorhart! How lovely and joyous it is to have you with me!"

Those wide, chahimkar eyes were round and trembling. Silkie squealed and squeaked in his private language.

Starfire pretended to understand every word, squealing and cooing back at him.

(Hr)

They all sat at the conference table in the Batcave. Robin had never seen it before, but Batman had pressed a button on his utility belt, and part of the rock flooring revolved to reveal a conference table.

Of course, because this was a gathering in the Batcave, and contained two of Robin's friends, Batman apparently felt the need to test Raven. Testing consisted of a stare down.

Batman stared at Starfire first. She didn't last five minutes in the stare down of the year. After a few seconds of Batman's long, intense glare, Starfire crumbled and looked to Robin.

Raven, on the other hand, did much better. He couldn't help but feel pride. He had trained Raven. Sure, she came complete with powers. But she hadn't come complete with martial arts skills, or the ability to fall. And she certainly hadn't come complete with detective skills, as useful as the Titans had found her empathy.

Raven stood up under Batman's glare. She didn't crumble the way Starfire had. Instead, she locked eyes with him, her chin upraised.

"What really brings you to Gotham?" Batman asked.

"My job. By this afternoon, you're going to have a group of Basque-speaking terrorists on the loose in Gotham. They've cut their teeth in Jump City, under the Titans' and the Mayor's collective nose."

"The Teen Titans is a group of teenaged meta-humans, led by a sidekick. I am Batman."

_Is that sort of like, I AM HE-MAN?_

Robin wasn't sure how he felt about such obvious arrogance. On the one hand, Batman had earned that arrogance through eleven years of being himself— that was to say, practically perfect.

On the other hand, it didn't exactly endear him to Raven.

But did how Raven felt about Batman matter, so long as she cracked her case?

And Batman really wasn't so bad, anyway.

"Tell me more about your terrorists."

Raven sighed. "I don't really know much about them. They aren't really Basque. But they refuse to speak English in public. I'm not sure why. I also don't know why they blow things up."

"What do you know of their religion?"

"Nothing. They don't evangelize, they don't advertise where they hold their religious services."

"So the only thing we actually know about them is that they speak Basque and play with explosives."

"En short, yes. But doesn't their ability to stay off the radar worry you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because your explanation is too complicated."

"Please explain."

"You say they have committed crimes, but have been skilled enough to keep those crimes hidden. There is a different explanation."

Raven quirked an eyebrow. "That explanation being?"

"That there are no crimes but the one in which you caught them."

Robin shook his head. "If you thought that, then why did you volunteer the Bat-Jet to bring her here?"

But Batman remained silent.

"Perhaps he has another theory," Starfire offered.

Batman smirked. Though he said nothing, Robin could read Batman's change in attitude towards Starfire.

Robin sat back and smirked also.

"I'm guessing she's right."

Hearing Raven's dry tone made him realize how much he'd missed it.

"Please, Mr. Batman, will you not share your theory with us?"

"Instead of being skilled, what if they were just cunning?" Batman took a sip of water from a glass that Robin knew for a fact hadn't been there moments ago.

Hmm. Alfred was getting faster in his old age, instead of slower. Food for thought.

Food for as much thought as the way Batman was toying with him. And Robin didn't need to see the look on Batman's face to know that Batman knew something he didn't.

But why would he play coy? What lesson could the Titans learn from Batman toying with them?

He pondered asking his mentor to get to the point, but stopped short before doing so. What had gotten into him? He should have known better than to even think about speaking so disrespectfully to Batman in front of others.

Batman tapped a few keys on the conference table. Several pictures appeared on the Cray's vast monitor. The pictures looked rather like the code that formed the Titans' monitoring programs in Jump City.

But he didn't recognize the numbers scrolling across the screen. "Is that. . . Jump City?"

"I don't know. Is it?" Batman pressed another key on the table, and images of a slum district replaced the numbers.

"I have never seen that place before. That is _not_ Jump City. It cannot be."

Batman looked sharply at Starfire. The scowl said more than enough. Starfire looked at the screen and swallowed.

"This is a part of Jump City known as Hell's Kitchen. The place is almost as bad as any of Gotham's slums."

Raven didn't even remove her eyes from the screen to phrase her question. "Why are you showing us this?"

"Because you've never seen it before. Hell's Kitchen was the one place in Jump City that the Titans' monitors never touched."

And in his mind, all the pieces of a certain bomb-shaped jigsaw puzzle fell into place. "It's there that the terrorists started, isn't it?"

Batman tapped a few more keys on the table. The images changed, the nesting of the pictures vanished. The view of one camera replaced the other six. It showed twelve people, three with bags slung on their shoulders, entering a ghetto apartment building.

Batman moved the tape forward ten minutes. The twelve returned, three of them without bags. Forward another three minutes.

The apartment building exploded.

Robin felt his jaw drop. "When was this? How could we have not known about this?"

"That was the afternoon of October the 27th. Why you didn't know about this is understandable, of course. The police were too busy ensuring that middle class infants and children survived the undead escapades to care about some apartment building in Hell's Kitchen."

"How could this have not registered on the police scanner? How could. . ."

**2**

_November 24th _

_Bludhaven, 9:30 AM_

The alarm clock went off. Why he still insisted on setting an alarm, he didn't know. But he did. He'd positioned it across the room, so that he would have to either sleep through it (unlikely, because it had woken him up), get up and turn it off (equally unlikely, because he didn't feel like it), or just lie in bed and ignore it (the least likely of all, because he had absolutely no ability to ignore annoying things).

Groaning, he forced himself to roll out of bed, stand up, and turn off the alarm.

From the other room, Cyborg shouted, "Thank you! Watching local news!"

"Yeah?" Beast Boy called back, forcing interest. "Learning anything?"

"Only that Summer Gleeson is the hottest thing since the sun!"

"Oh. Okay."

He changed his underwear and clothing and wandered into the living room.

The state of the union? Cyborg was indeed watching local news. He hadn't been completely right about Summer Gleeson, though. Summer Gleeson _was_ hot, but she wasn't the hottest thing since the sun. Maybe since global warming, but not since the actual sun.

(Hr)

Cyborg stared at the image on the television screen. It showed Tim Drake. On the bottom of the screen were the words, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?

When Tim had gone _missing_?

He held up his robotic arm, tapped the screen at certain points. Within moments, Robin's face appeared on the screen.

"Kind of busy," Robin said.

"What's this about?"

(Hr)

And that's it, folks. I solemnly swear that there _will_ be an update of this fic this Saturday. I _swear_. I vow. I promise. I pledge.

However, there's something I need to mention.

Reviews consisting of: "I liek ur fic update soon" piss me off. Reviews consisting of "no robin/raven cuz it isn't cannon" piss me off.

1. I AM ON AN UPDATE SCHEDULE. MY UPDATE TIMES AND DAYS ARE SET IN STONE. And no, I'm not meeting it exactly, but I do try. This week, I had power outages and phone outages because of storms. I live in a very rural area. If my phone lines fall, it can take days, even weeks, for the phone-line-fixing-man to arrive near my house. Seeing as my connection is dial-up, no phones means no updates.

2. I write exclusively Robin/Raven. I am well aware that Robin and Starfire got engaged in the comics (Raven, by the way, blew up the wedding, which effectively ended the relationship). Yes, I know Robin/Starfire is canon. Did you read that? CANON. Not "cannon." A "cannon" is a war machine. It has balls, and employs gunpowder. Do _not_ under any circumstances speak to me of what is canon and what is not if you can't even spell the freaking word.

3. A lot of people have noticed that I have a very depressing Beast Boy. My interpretation of Beast Boy is the way it is because I dislike comic relief. If a character is nothing but comic relief, then he is worse than useless to me. I write a dark Beast Boy, because a bright one wouldn't be as funny. My sense of humor is extremely macabre. Canon Beast Boy wouldn't be able to be funny in any of my fiction. And not only that, but I don't _like_ canon Beast Boy. I like my Beast Boy served with a side of angst and stuffed full of crazy.

And as a direct response to the following review (which is actually for Adonis in the Fur, but I'll post it here anyway):

SO what Happens next?

**Read the frigging fic.**

The Beast comes?

**What Beast? Where did you get the impression that there was a Beast? Did you even read the fic?**

Will BB amd Rae be paired?

**I seriously don't think you read the fic. The summary indicates that Beast Boy is a little psycho. There is a section in the fic where somebody mentions that three of the Titans die. Either Beast Boy or Raven is the murderer. This means NO PAIRING BB/RAVEN. One of them is a murderer. Murderers don't **get** paired, got it?**

**Also, please learn to spell. "Amd" is not a word..**

I hope they do!

**See above.**

BEAST BOY AND RAVEN 4 EVER!

**...I have no words. Then again, I'm a BB/Terra fan who writes exclusively Robin/Raven. Not because it's canon, but because it seems a better fit. I am not EVER going to write a BB/R fic. Ever. I don't even **like** Beast Boy.**


	8. Chapter Seven Yes, this really is 7

**Return to Home**

**Chapter Seven**

**1  
**_November 24th  
Gotham City, 2:03 AM_

Starfire stood as close to the place where the jet would land as she safely could.

Robin stood with her, nearly touching her.

Such a large amount of such potent happiness filled her that she had trouble keeping both of her feet on the ground. The instant she moved her attention to other things, she would find that one foot or another had lifted into the air.

"Is this not a time of great joy?" She queried.

Batman looked over at them. He stared at her for what she decided was the longest second of her life, then looked back at the sky.

"Not really," Robin murmured in her ear.

The thought of those luscious lips so close to her ear brought her straight back to the ground. Some joys exceeded even the sky.

"Why not? Does seeing Friend Raven again not gladden your heart?"

"Oh, I'll be happy to see her again... But her needing to be here isn't a good thing."

"I take your meaning. You speak of the people who have caused conflagrations in warehouses."

"Yeah. The cultists. They're going to come to Gotham today, and it's not going to be pretty."

The thought of such people attacking Robin's home sent her straight back to the ground. She could imagine what he must be feeling. Surely his breath now caught in his throat the way her own did when she thought of other races assailing Tamaran.

Minutes slid by like hours, like days.

Like centuries.

And then, the humming. The humming sounded really, Starfire reflected, less like "hmmmm" and more like "grimmmmm."

In the sky, a dark jet appeared from the west. With agonizing slowness, the jet maneuvered itself into a landing position, and then landed.

It handled, from what she understood, rather like a helicopter.

And then the hatch lifted up. Somebody kicked out a staircase. A cloaked figure rushed down the steps, moving so quickly as to almost be tumbling headlong.

Starfire rushed forward. "Friend Raven!"

The cloaked figure straightened, clearly startled.

Starfire's arms closed around the figure's shoulders. The figure had the appropriate stature, and felt light and brittle as a bundle of twigs in her arms.

"Starfire!" Raven choked.

"It is wonderful to have you here!"

"... You're glad to see me?"

"Oh, but of course, Friend Raven! You are my friend!"

Friend Raven rewarded her with a tiny smile. "Speaking of friends, look who I brought you."

From somewhere within that cloak, Raven produced a certain adorable off-white body. When the off-white little body caught sight (or perhaps scent; she had never determined his primary sense) of her, he released an overjoyed squeal.

Starfire released the same overjoyed little squeal, snatching Silkie and spinning around with him in her arms.

"My lovely little grothnos! My chahimkar-eyed little glorhart! How lovely and joyous it is to have you with me!"

Those wide, chahimkar eyes were round and trembling. Silkie squealed and squeaked in his private language.

Starfire pretended to understand every word, squealing and cooing back at him.

* * *

They all sat at the conference table in the Batcave. Robin had never seen it before, but Batman had pressed a button on his utility belt, and part of the rock flooring revolved to reveal a conference table.

Of course, because this was a gathering in the Batcave, and contained two of Robin's friends, Batman apparently felt the need to test Raven. Testing consisted of a stare down.

Batman stared at Starfire first. She didn't last five minutes in the stare down of the year. After a few seconds of Batman's long, intense glare, Starfire crumbled and looked to Robin.

Raven, on the other hand, did much better. He couldn't help but feel pride. He had trained Raven. Sure, she came complete with powers. But she hadn't come complete with martial arts skills, or the ability to fall. And she certainly hadn't come complete with detective skills, as useful as the Titans had found her empathy.

Raven stood up under Batman's glare. She didn't crumble the way Starfire had. Instead, she locked eyes with him, her chin upraised.

"What really brings you to Gotham?" Batman asked.

"My job. By this afternoon, you're going to have a group of Basque-speaking terrorists on the loose in Gotham. They've cut their teeth in Jump City, under the Titans' and the Mayor's collective nose."

"The Teen Titans is a group of teenaged meta-humans, led by a sidekick. I am Batman."

_Is that sort of like, I AM HE-MAN?_

Robin wasn't sure how he felt about such obvious arrogance. On the one hand, Batman had earned that arrogance through eleven years of being himself— that was to say, practically perfect.

On the other hand, it didn't exactly endear him to Raven.

But did how Raven felt about Batman matter, so long as she cracked her case?

And Batman really wasn't so bad, anyway.

"Tell me more about your terrorists."

Raven sighed. "I don't really know much about them. They aren't really Basque. But they refuse to speak English in public. I'm not sure why. I also don't know why they blow things up."

"What do you know of their religion?"

"Nothing. They don't evangelize, and they don't advertise where they hold their religious services."

"So the only thing we actually know about them is that they speak Basque and play with explosives."

"In short, yes. But doesn't their ability to stay off the radar worry you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because your explanation is too complicated."

"Please explain."

"You say they have committed crimes, but have been skilled enough to keep those crimes hidden. There is a different explanation."

Raven quirked an eyebrow. "That explanation being?"

"That there are no crimes but the one in which you caught them."

Robin shook his head. "If you thought that, then why did you volunteer the Bat-Jet to bring her here?"

But Batman remained silent.

"Perhaps he has another theory," Starfire offered.

Batman smirked. Though he said nothing, Robin could read Batman's change in attitude towards Starfire.

Robin sat back and smirked also.

"I'm guessing she's right."

Hearing Raven's dry tone made him realize how much he'd missed it.

"Please, Mr. Batman, will you not share your theory with us?"

"Instead of being skilled, what if they were just cunning?" Batman took a sip of water from a glass that Robin knew for a fact hadn't been there moments ago.

Hmm. Alfred was getting faster in his old age, instead of slower. Food for thought.

Food for as much thought as the way Batman was toying with him. And Robin didn't need to see the look on Batman's face to know that Batman knew something he didn't.

But why would he play coy? What lesson could the Titans learn from Batman toying with them?

He pondered asking his mentor to get to the point, but stopped short before doing so. What had gotten into him? He should have known better than to even think about speaking so disrespectfully to Batman in front of others.

Batman tapped a few keys on the conference table. Several pictures appeared on the Cray's vast monitor. The pictures looked rather like the code that formed the Titans' monitoring programs in Jump City.

But he didn't recognize the numbers scrolling across the screen. "Is that... Jump City?"

"I don't know. Is it?" Batman pressed another key on the table, and images of a slum district replaced the numbers.

"I have never seen that place before. That is _not_ Jump City. It cannot be."

Batman looked sharply at Starfire. The scowl said more than enough. Starfire looked at the screen and swallowed.

"This is a part of Jump City known as Hell's Kitchen. The place is almost as bad as any of Gotham's slums."

Raven didn't even remove her eyes from the screen to phrase her question. "Why are you showing us this?"

"Because you've never seen it before. Hell's Kitchen was the one place in Jump City that the Titans' monitors never touched."

And in his mind, all the pieces of a certain bomb-shaped jigsaw puzzle fell into place. "It's there that the terrorists started, isn't it?"

Batman tapped a few more keys on the table. The images changed, the nesting of the pictures vanished. The view of one camera replaced the other six. It showed twelve people, three with bags slung on their shoulders, entering a ghetto apartment building.

Batman moved the tape forward ten minutes. The twelve returned, three of them without bags. Forward another three minutes.

The apartment building exploded.

Robin felt his jaw drop. "When was this? How could we have not known about this?"

"That was the afternoon of October the 27th. Why you didn't know about this is understandable, of course. The police were too busy ensuring that middle class infants and children survived the undead escapades to care about some apartment building in Hell's Kitchen."

"How could this have not registered on the police scanner? How could..."

**2  
**_November 24th  
Bludhaven, 9:30 AM_

The alarm clock went off. Why he still insisted on setting an alarm, he didn't know. But he did. He'd positioned it across the room, so that he would have to either sleep through it (unlikely, because it had woken him up), get up and turn it off (equally unlikely, because he didn't feel like it), or just lie in bed and ignore it (the least likely of all, because he had absolutely no ability to ignore annoying things).

Groaning, he forced himself to roll out of bed, stand up, and turn off the alarm.

From the other room, Cyborg shouted, "Thank you! Watching local news!"

"You're welcome." Beast Boy called back, forcing interest. "Learning anything?"

"Only that Summer Gleeson is the hottest thing since the sun!"

"Oh. Yeah, she _is_ the hottest thing since hot."

He changed his underwear and clothing and wandered into the living room.

The state of the union? Cyborg was indeed watching local news. He hadn't been completely right about Summer Gleeson, though. Summer Gleeson _was_ hot, but she wasn't the hottest thing since the sun. Maybe since global warming, but not since the actual sun.

* * *

_9:42 AM_

Cyborg turned on the television. This was his first chance to watch the boob tube all week. He'd been too busy trying to make this place livable, and then he'd been napping. After his naps, he went back to work trying to clean and disinfect the place. The roach hotels required replacement daily, and it didn't look like he'd made half a dent in the population yet.

The television screen showed Tim Drake. On the bottom of the screen were the words, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?

He held up his robotic arm, tapped the screen at certain points. Within moments, Robin's face appeared on the screen.

"Kind of busy," Robin said.

"What's this about?"

"What's what about?"

"This entire 'Tim is on_ Have you seen this boy _adsand we're not helping you find him' thing?"

"Uh?"

"Why didn't you ask us for help?"

"Well... I thought Bludhaven would be enough to deal with, you know? I thought you guys would be too busy. And with Beast Boy... You know."

Cyborg snuck a look over at Beast Boy, who stood staring at the locked, dead-bolted and safety-chained door.

"You guys aren't busy?" Robin asked.

But Cyborg didn't answer. What did you say? _Pretty soon he's gonna be wriggling around on the floor and shoving stuff in his mouth and drooling and crap?_

"Cyborg? You on? You on? Do you hear me?"

"Sorry, Robin. Yeah, I hear you, I just..."

"What?"

"I think Beast Boy has some unaddressed issues."

_To say the least._

"Unaddressed issues? Get out." Robin grinned. "He's going crazy, remember?"

"I think he's going a little crazier than we thought."

_A little crazier than we thought. Yeah, right. More like a lot crazier than we thought: Psycho crazy. Murder-suicide-meteor-slave crazy. Padded room crazy._

"Crazier than we thought."

"Yeah."

"Like how much?"

"Like, well, he's definitely hallucinating. He started talking nonsense yesterday, and it's only been getting worse. This morning, he told me I was welcome when I never even said thank you. He asked me what I was learning, and I was like 'from what', but he completely ignored me and then said that yeah, he thought Summer Gleeson was the hottest thing ever, too."

Cyborg paused, finally unleashing the biggest question on his mind. "Who is Summer Gleeson?"

* * *

His sister was standing by the door. Well, at least she had come inside out of the rain, but he wasn't entirely sure he liked her just standing in front of the door, soaking wet and staring at him.

"Well, say something," he prompted. "Don't just stand there."

_—Where did mom and dad go? Garfield, why can't I find mom and dad? They aren't in their lab, and they aren't in their room or the dining room or..._

—_Don't worry about it, babe. I got it covered._

Susanna had been the last to die. After their parents had collapsed in the attic, looking at baby pictures and all the servants had collapsed in the servants' hallways where Susanna would never have thought to look...

It had been him and Susanna. Just the two of them.

And then there had been one, when Susie's face had gone slack as he tucked her into bed and gave her the shot. Her yellowed skin had seemed so rigid, so tight, and then so loose, and hours later it had become tight again.

And he had held her and cried, and sung to her dead body the way he'd sung to her unmoving baby body when she'd first come home from the hospital.

_I had a dream the other night,  
__When everything was still;  
__I thought I saw Susanna dear,  
__A-coming down the hill.  
__The buckwheat cake was in her mouth,  
__The tear was in her eye,  
__Said I, I'm coming from the south,  
__Susanna don't you cry._

He hummed the words, now, for the little girl in the white and pink dress who went drip-drip on the floor right in front of their door and stared at him with the saddest, greenest eyes he could ever remember seeing.

She looked sadder now than Raven ever had. _Oh! Susanna_ had been their song. They had always sung it together when he tucked her in, when she took a bath, on car trips.

They had been singing it together before either of them had the foggiest clue what a banjo was.

* * *

"Oh god," Cyborg moaned. "He's humming _Oh! Susanna_."

"Do you have an issue with that?"

"No, not really... I just, I just didn't expect him to know it existed."

"Why not?"

"He's from New Jersey, okay?"

"Ah. I get it. So am I."

"Yeah, but you've traveled all over the country."

"My family's from Romania. I seriously doubt anyone in my family knows that song."

"Oh, that's right, isn't it?"

Robin didn't say anything in response to that. Cyborg supposed that you really didn't have to say anything to that.

**3  
**_November 24th  
Gotham, 9:48 AM_

Dick snapped the T-Communicator shut and went back into the dining room. At the dining table sat Jack Drake, his wife Janet, and the other two members of his team.

"I'm sorry to step out on you like that," he said. "I needed to take that call. May I ask why you're here?"

Jack Drake looked over to his wife. On the table, their hands found each other, clasped together.

Janet leaned forward, said in a trembling voice, "I know that you and my son were good friends. I... You... Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

Dick looked at the pair. Janet had red rimmed, bloodshot eyes, while Jack didn't seem to be suffering any ill effects.

So, not the picture perfect family at all. Well, he might be able to use that.

"Mrs. Drake—"

"Janet, please. I'm too young to be just Mrs. Drake."

"Janet, I didn't even know Tim was missing until I saw it on the news. He hasn't contacted me, and I can't think of any place he might have gone."

"He's run away before, you know," Jack said.

"Yes, I know. I met him in Jump City."

Janet leaned forward again, her expression pleading. "Are you sure you can't think of a single place?"

"Maybe Jump City again? Maybe the places that he went when he went missing the first time?" Dick shook his head, feigned a sigh. You had to play moments like this very carefully. "I just can't imagine him off and running away again. It seems so unlike him."

"What do _you_ know about my son?" Jack snarled. "You haven't even known him for a month!"

Dick resisted the urge to say, _I know more than you do about him, and I've known him for longer than you have, because you never knew him at all._

Instead, Dick spread his hands. "Mr. Drake, you have a point. I'm just a friend of his he met a little under a month ago. You're his parents. You would know better than I do. All I know is that this doesn't seem like the guy I brought back here."

Irony was such a bitch, wasn't it? And so was verbally bitch slapping people without them even knowing it.

"Mrs. Drake, I am genuinely sorry to hear of your loss. I assure you, Dick, Raven and I will do everything we can to help you find him," Starfire said. She tugged on the purple sweater she wore.

"Thank you, Kory. That's very nice of you, but I'm sure it won't be necessary. I'm sure he'll come home soon," Janet said.

Neither Raven nor Dick said anything. There just wasn't anything to say to wishful thinking like that.

Starfire didn't use words. Instead, she leaned over the table and clasped Janet Drake's other hand in both of her own. She smiled a warm, reassuring smile and said, "I am sure you have the rightness."

Jack and Janet left shortly after, claiming that they had an interview on GCTV.

"That was pointless," Raven said. "I need to get back to work on our lovely little cult."

"Go ahead. I'm going to search the stoplight cameras in the city for NGI-925."

"You can do that?"

"Yeah. Well, Batman can. The Cray takes every license plate number and logs it."

"That's kind of disturbing."

Starfire pulled Silkie out of the basket in which she had somehow managed to hide it. She hugged the thing tightly and fed it the plate of cookies Jack and Janet hadn't eaten.

"I would like to have a look at this Jell-O," Starfire said when she had finished staring at Silkie. "Gelatinous food that may not be destructed... This sounds interesting."

Dick grinned. "You know what? I'd like to have a look, too."

* * *

_7:43 PM_

"Squishy! So squishy! This stuff is awesome!" Robin muttered.

Robin stared at the Jell-O. He prodded it with a gloved finger.

The Jell-O wiggled.

"Awesome!"

"It has much of the squishy-ness," Starfire observed. "But is it truly indestructible?"

"Want to find out?" Robin asked. "Hey, Raven, do you mind if we field test this thing?"

Raven turned away from the Cray. "What happened to searching for NGI-925?"

"You have the Cray. I'd need the Cray."

"Do whatever you want to it. I've already subjected it to a host of tests, including the microwave, the pool, a Jacuzzi, throwing it off the roof of the Tower..."

"...Yeah, yeah, got your drift."

Robin hefted a butcher knife he'd managed to steal from the Alfred's kitchen. "But can it withstand A BUTCHER KNIFE?"

He plunged the knife into the Jell-O and pulled.

The Jell-O made wiggly sounds. The thickness of the substance actually resisted the knife. It felt as though he were moving his hand against a water current.

The instant the knife left the Jell-O, bits of red gelatin went plop-plop-plop down the blade and rejoined the main. The mass of Jell-O wiggled for a bit.

When the wiggling stopped, the Jell-O looked exactly as it had before he'd tried to cut it.

"Well hello, Jell-O," he mumbled. "Holy indestructible gelatins, Batman!"

Starfire flung a starbolt at it.

"That won't work either," Raven called. "The only thing that made a dent in it that lasted for five minutes was when I dug some out with a spoon and put it in another Tupperware container five feet away."

"How did _that_ resolve itself?"

"See for yourself."

Robin repeated the incident. He watched, amazed, as the spoonful of Jell-O began to ram the lid of the container.

Within two minutes, it had rammed the lid straight off the container and had oozed its way out. Like a line of ducklings, droplets of Jell-O oozed towards the mass.

"Amazing!"

"You are fond of that word, are you not, Friend Robin?"

But Robin had caught the bits of Jell-O and stuffed them back in the Tupperware. This time, he duct taped the lid to the container and moved back one foot.

"Starfire, write this down: at two meters from Specimen A, Specimen B continued to attempt to rejoin Specimen A."

Another fifty centimeters back. "No change at two hundred fifty centimeters from Specimen A."

"Move back another fifty centimeters."

"Three hundred cm, no change."

"More, then. Surely they cannot sense each other from very far."

"Three hundred fifty cm, no change."

"Perhaps more. Not so much, though."

"Three hundred seventy-five cm, Specimen B appears to be slowing down."

"We have it. So, try it at four hundred centimeters, Friend Robin!"

"Four hundred cm, Specimen B has stopped moving entirely."

"Twelve feet, huh?" Raven looked over her shoulder, "So if you want to do more tests on that lump, they all have to be from at least twelve feet away."

Robin stared at the little lump of now-normal Jell-O. "I wonder what would happen if a human digested it?"

* * *

_8:00 PM_

Robin knelt facedown over a bucket. He wiped his mouth with a glove. His mouth felt disgusting, his throat hurt, and his stomach was going to hate him for days.

"Worst idea I've ever had," Robin moaned. "Starfire, if you're really my friend, you will never, ever under any circumstances let me do that again."

"Do you feel any better?" She asked through the bathroom door.

"No, not really."

"I notice that you now have room to speak before needing to expel disgusting liquid from your mouth."

"That's called vomiting, Starfire."

"Oh. But look on the well-lit side! You can speak now! Earlier, you could only moan and make scary noises."

_And puke_, he grumbled silently. _Speaking of puking._

He pulled his hand away from his mouth and tilted his face over the bucket again.

Little red gelatinous droplets were crawling _out of his vomit_. He snatched them up and stuffed them in an empty Coke bottle. Something red crawled out of his mouth. He picked that one up and put it in the Coke bottle, too.

"I wonder what it was that set off such a reaction. Friend Raven says that Silkie did not react in such a manner. He merely squealed as if he were in pain— in _pain_, my poor little grothnos in pain! —and spat the Jell-O out."

"Must be something in human saliva, or maybe human stomach acids."

At length, he cleared all the Jell-O (and everything else he'd eaten in the past twelve hours) from his stomach. All the slithery Jell-O fragments found their way into the Coke bottle, and then found their way into a second Tupperware dish.

"I wonder if it will react any differently than Specimen C," he murmured.

"Hey, I found NGI-925 for you," Raven called as soon he stepped out of the bathroom. "Last seen on Devin Road, in the right-turn lane."

Robin grinned. "Right off Devin Road leads only to one place. The Wayne Memorial Cemetery."

Raven looked at the watch built into the T-Communicator. "I have to leave for the airport. If I can engage them now, I can probably catch them."

"Yes, Friend Raven, I was wondering why you did not leave earlier this afternoon to go to the port of the skies."

"Somebody closed down the Saint Louis airport during their layover there. I couldn't fly in to pick them up, and they couldn't leave." Raven checked the clock again. "I have to go _now_."

Robin looked back to Starfire after she had left. "Want to see what this thing reacts to?"

"I am not ingesting the Jell-O of Evil, Robin. You cannot make me."

Robin grinned.

* * *

_Five Minutes Later_

Starfire tilted her head over a bucket and pinched her nose as she vomited for the first time in her life.

"Starfire, I need to head to the Cemetery, alright? Finding Tim like this would be anti-climactic, but that's the way I'd prefer it."

"That is fine, Robin," she called as soon as she finished her second bout of the vomiting. "When you come back, we need to Talk."

She supposed that the sound of tires squealing as Robin raced his motorcycle from the Batcave made as good an answer as any other course of action.

* * *

Words and music to _Oh! Susanna _by Stephen Foster. Used without permission.

Honestly speaking, I've been sitting on this chapter for two days. And I kept my promise, didn't I? It's 9:00 on Saturday, where I'm sitting.

By the way, EVERYBODY SHOULD GO SEE Batman Begins. The movie is FREAKING AWESOME, and this is coming from a girl who has been a Batman fan since she was three years old and is very familiar with the comics. I've seen it twice.


End file.
